1969
1968 1969 1970 Events * SALT negotiations between U.S. and U.S.S.R. begin. * U.S. Sen. George McGovern introduces bill to establish the National Economic Conversion Commission. * Charles Evers, brother of slain civil leader Medgar Evers, elected mayor of Fayette, Mississippi. * Border between British Gibraltar and Spain is closed by Spanish fascist dictator Gen. Francisco Franco and will not be reopened until 1985. * Prof. Lawrence C. Wrightman publishes evidence that "Law 'n Order" George Wallace supporters are less law abiding than Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon supporters in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 13:113-120, 1969. * China's population is 806.71 million. * Easy Rider is released. * Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is signed, jus cogens norm reconceptualized. * Yasser Arafat is elected chairman of the PLO. * Conrad Black and David Radler buy the Sherbrooke Record. * Carlos Montes is convicted of a felony for throwing a soda can that did not strike its target. Timeline January * January: Black Power march on 10 Downing Street against immigration controls and the white minority government of Rhodesia. * January 20: Richard Nixon inaugurated as the 37th President of the United States. Spiro Agnew is sworn in as Vice President. * January 22: Third World Liberation Front organizes strike at UC, Berkeley. * January 23: Office of Rector Paul Roche at the Sorbonne is occupied by radical students. * January 30: Allan Welsh Dulles, DCIA from 1953 to 61 and brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, dies at 75. February * February: Operation Dewey Canyon I invasion of Laos by U.S. and South Vietnamese military units. * February 4: Al-Fatah leader Yasser Arafat officially becomes PLO Chair. * February 12: Darwin Day * February 27: Students in Berlin protest the visit of Pres. Richard Nixon. * February 28: Los Angeles court refuses Sirhan Sirhan's request to be executed. April * April: Harvard University abolishes its ROTC program. * April: Gallup Public Opinion Poll finds that 44% of American adults still support Nixon's handling of the war in Vietnam; 26% now disapprove. * April 2: 15 NYC Back Panther Party members arrested on charges of conspiracy. * April 8: John J. Caulfied assumes his special responsibilities on the Nixon White House staff. * April 11: Secretary of State Henry Kissinger meets with Greek Foreign Minister Panayptis Pipinelis and teels him that th Nixon adminsitration will remove restrictions on the Greek military junta. * April 20: People's Park is created in Berkeley. Hundreds of people clear ground, plant trees, grass, flowers, set up playground equipment in a lot remaining after UC Berkeley demolished a block of houses in 1968. The sentiment was that UC had targeted the location as a concentration of hippie culture and political anti-war agitation. Free food is distributed, starting a long tradition. * April 22: First human eye transplant. * April 22: indian Naxalite factions form the Communist Party of India (CPML), India's thrid communist party. The Andhra Maoist faction refuses to join. * April 28: French President Charles de Gaulle resigns. * April 30: Height of the U.S. miltiary presence in South Vietnam, with 543,000 troops deployed. May * May: Battle for Ap Bia, a.k.a. Hamburger Hill: 85 U.S. dead and 300 wounded. * May: Nixon orders wiretapping of National Security Council staff, including Morton C. Halperin. Halperin will be bugged until February 10, 1971, ten months after his last affiliation with Henry Kissinger. * May 21: Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to death. Never executed. * May 29: U.S. Senator Frank Church comments on The Today Show that, "We've waited for months for Mr. Nixon to reveal his plans for ending the war in Vietnam; he said he had one during the campaign. His statement last night was merely a restatement of the position that President Johnson had taken many times." * May 31: John Lennon and Yoko Ono record "Give Peace a Chance." June * June 2: Collission off coast of Vietnam between Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne and the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans kills 74. * June 2: Secret meeting at the Hakone Gongen Shinto Temple, in Kanagawa Prefecture, between Japanese and West German officials to plot their collaborative effort to acquire nuclear weapons. Japan is represented by Ryohei Murata, Takahashi Suzuki and Hisahiko Okazaki. West Germany is represented by Egon Bahr. * June 8: Pres. Richard M. Nixon announces Vietnamization Program. Asians can die killing Asians in the name of American anti-communism. * June 8: El Caudillo, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco orders the border gate between Spain and The British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar closed in response to the Gibraltar Constitution Order. * June 20: First manned lunar landing. Neil Armstrong walks on the moon. * June 27: Patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, rise up against police harrassment. The riot marks the start of the gay rights movement in America. * June 30: Hawaii revises its laws on leprosy after 103 years, ending the requirement of exile. July * July 24: Muhammad Ali convicted on appeal for refusing induction into the U.S. Army. * July 27: Richard Millhouse Nixon announces the Guam Doctrine or Nixon Doctrine]. Burden of ground combat in Vietnam to be shifted to colonial levies. * July 20: NASA Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon while Michael Collins orbits, fulfilling John F. Kennedy's challenge. August * August: Woodstock Festival. * August: Peoples Law Office founded. * August 24: Peru nationalizes US oil interests. September * September 2: Ho Chi Minh dies. Official North Vietnamese government statement will claim that he died on September 3. * September 10: Nixon orders the wiretapping of journalist Marvin Kalb. * September 26: Get Smart moves to CBS. October * October 8-11: Days of Rage protests in Chicago led by the Weathermen. * October 15: Candlelight peace march around the White House. * October 29: A message is transmitted from a computer at UCLA to a computer at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) via a network called ARPANET. The internet is born, another example of government rather than business opening frontiers. November * November: Indians of All Tribes seizes Alcatraz Island. * November 3: Richard M. "Tricky Dick" Nixon delivers his "Silent Majority" televised speech. He claism that, "the great majority of my fellow-Americans" support the War in Vietnam. * November 10: Sesame Street debuts on PBS. * November 14: Secretary of State Henry Kissinger issues National Security Decision memorandum 34 (NSDM 34) which approves resumtption of military aid to the Greek miltiary junta. * November 15: New Mobe organizes large anti-war demonstrations in Washignton, DC and San Francisco. On stage at the San Francisco rally Black Panther David Hilliard threatened hyperbolically, "Nixon is an evil man..responsible for all the attacks on the Black Panther Party...fuck that motherfucking man. We will kill Richard Nixon. We will kill any motherfucker that stands in the way of our freedom." * November 18: U.S. Pres. Richard M. Nixon meets with Greek Ambassadro Basil Vitsaxas, who assures Nixon that the 1967 military coup was necessary to recue Greece from chaos and the political left. * November 24: Baby-killer Army Lt. William L Calley charged with massacre of over 100 civilians in My Lai Vietnam in March 1968 is ordered to stand trial by court martial. He will receive a slap on the wrist for mass murder and then receive multiple marriage proposals. * November 25: Pres. Nixon promises to submit the Geneva Protocol of 1925 to the U.S. Senate for advice and consent. He does not do so until August 19, 1970. December * December 1: The first draft lottery in the United States since World War II is held. Sequential introduction of date capsules in the rolling drum result in non-random outcome as men born born later in the year are more likely to have high numbers and thus more likely to be drafted. Everything Nixon touched went bad. * December 4: Chicago police storm West Side apartment, killing Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. * December 6: Altamont concert tragedy. * December 10: American Committee to Keep Biafra Alive pronounces the Universal Declaration of Human Rights "dead" on its 21st anniversary. * December 11: Hawkish South Carolina Representative L. Mendel Rivers, Chair of the House Armed Services Committee names a special panel of the Armed Services to delve further into the My Lai Massacre. He names Louisiana Representative H. Edward Hebert, who once advocated usuing nuclear weapons in Vietnam, as its chair. * December 15: U.S. Senate debates an amendment to the Department of Defense Procurement and Development Act reading: "In line with the expressed intention of the President of the United States, none of the funds appropriated by this Act shall be used to finance the introduction of American ground combat troops in Laos and Thailand."